Manual vs Automated Scanning: Which Does Your Store Need?

One of the more practical questions we get is simple: do I actually need automatic scanning, or is running it myself enough?

The honest answer depends on how often your stock actually changes, and how much attention you're realistically going to give it.

How manual scanning works

On Free and Starter, you run a scan yourself from the dashboard. Free gives you one scan total. Starter gives you scans whenever you want them, along with the live alerts feed, KPIs, and CSV export.

Manual scanning is a genuinely good fit if you check in on your store every day or two anyway. You open the dashboard, hit scan, and get a current read. Nothing is running in the background when you're not looking.

How automatic scanning works

Pro (and above) adds a scan that runs on its own, once a day, without you having to remember to trigger it. It's handled by a scheduled job, not something sitting in a browser tab.

The real benefit isn't the scan itself, it's that problems get caught on a day you weren't even thinking about your store. A SKU going stale over a quiet weekend still gets flagged Monday morning instead of whenever you next happen to check.

If Slack or email alerts are switched on for your store, that's also when you'll hear about it, straight after that daily scan runs.

So which one do you actually need?

• Small catalogue, you check Shopify most days: manual scanning on Starter is probably enough.
• Larger catalogue, multiple people involved, or you genuinely forget to check some weeks: automatic scanning on Pro closes that gap.
• Just want to see if there's anything worth worrying about at all: start with the free plan's single scan first.

There's no wrong answer here so much as a question of how hands-on you want to be. Automatic scanning doesn't make the detection smarter, it just makes sure it happens even when you're not the one pressing the button.